To think that the Obesity Epidemic is Exagerated and there IS no so-called epidemic.

[luvmetelly]

It's been on the news all morning about Obesity..

Where are all these morbidly obese people? I was out all morning, on a very busy high street and I came across only two people who I would class as obese.
Where do they get their facts and figures from?

Meh. I'm borderline obese too, 5 ft 9 and size 16, losing baby weight and breastfeeding still so probably in another six months will lose another stone going on past experience with my other two, but I'll still be overweight. I just don't care. My pulse is 64, my bp is 120/80, I eat a boring but adequate diet with few processed foods other than the odd custard cream pack raid, I walk a minimum of three miles a day in a very hilly area pushing 60kg of weight in a double buggy, I don't have blood sugar issues. I'd rather judge my health on my vitals and what I can do with my body/how well I feel/how frequently I'm ill than as a statistic.

blanklook

I'd be a 14 in old sizing -and that makes much more sense.

Following on from blanklook was saying, my DM is 5ft 2" and weighed 7 stone 10 for most of her adult life and perfect size 10, she was considered slim but not thin.
I was always the "big" one out of the females in my family, at 8 and a half stone growing up! I now get people saying I'm thin. Our perceptions have changed for the worse.

I remember the first time my dh ( from Ivory Coast) came with me to a huge Tesco superstore. There are 40 checkouts there and the aisles go on forever. There's one just for soft drinks. And another with row upon row of biscuits (just sweet ones, the savoury ones are the other side!) He looked with amazement at the trolley I fetched, and we started putting things in it. As it got quite full his eyes were out on stalks. Then we got to the meat fridges. All that meat. He and his family might get a bit of offal once or twice a year. I put a week's supply in the trolley. By the time we got to the checkout he'd gone very quiet. In the car I saw he was softly crying. He said he was thinking of his family (60 people in a shanty-built courtyard) and how all that food would keep them for a year. Then I went quiet too. Makes you think...

duplodon there's actually quite a lot of evidence that being in the 'overweight' category is the best in terms of mortality rates - ie - that is the healthiest group! The BMI bands are fairly arbitrary and I agree, if you are fit and eat healthily, being 'overweight' is no cause for concern. The trend though, is for people not to be fit and active and to gain weight (and once you start getting into obese/morbidly obese there is certainly more of a problem healthwise) so if being' overweight' alerts people to a potential for problems and kicks them into taking better care of their diet and activity levels, then its not necessarily a bad thing....

Def agree with where you are - in expensive parts of London everyone looks thin not just slim. Where I am most people are larger - parents at our school I'd guess 25% quite large?

The thing is, I'm not sure I agree that people are more ignorant about nutrition than they were thirty years ago. We have greater resources than ever with regards to food and health education. I don't think anyone would argue that a takeaway is healthy, whereas my grandma was suspicious of anything that couldn't be fried...in that respect, I don't think education is neccessarily the answer. Look at Jamie's School Dinners - a lot of the responses from parents in more deprived areas was a bit 'meh'. There is a general apathy towards health in some circles.

I am at the very top of my 'healthy weight'. I don't look fat, and would feel perfectly comfortable wearing a bikini say and don't think anyone would bat an eyelid. I'm frequently told I'm slim, when I'm really not - I'm verging on being overweight.

I also feel a bit conflicted about things like 'fattitude' and the fatkini campaign...on the one hand, it's great that they feel body confident and I do see what they are trying to do but on the other hand, they are putting their health at risk and normalising obesity. I can imagine a similar campaign around, say, smoking would cause uproar.

I think our relationship with food has changed a lot. It's no longer just a source of energy; it's a reward, a comfort, a status symbol and more available and convenient than ever before.

hatespiders you're right, it does make you think.

Blimey hatesspiders that's a humbling post. We take so much for granted.

I think there is a problem. I've taught children's sport for over ten years and the number of seriously over weight children has risen. It really frustrates me that their parents have allowed them to get in this state.

I think it's complex why obesity is on the rise. No jobs, no money, poor education, very cheap plastic food, electrical gadgets being easily available.

I also find it atonishing that people feel they can freely comment on someones weight if they're skinny/ average sized but wouldnt dream of it for a bigger person.

Oh believe me they don't hold back if you're fat. You just don;t hear it because they don't say it to you obviously.

Morbidly obese is a BMI over 40 generally. 30-40 = obese 25-30= overweight.

The obesity epidemic isn't just people who are "morbidly obese" its generally the percentage of people over BMI of 25 ish who will develop weight related issues over time. Also people don't wake up one day with a BMI of 40 so you need to try to address at some point between 25-40 BMI.

And unless you're a pretty dedicated weight lifter or rugby player then the BMI range of 18-25 takes into account the vast majority of body types. Also it would be very rare for anyone to have a BMI over 30 without an increase in body fat so at worst some very muscular sports people would be classified as "overweight" but probably not obese.

Agree, part of it is shifting perceptions - we're so used to seeing overweight people that we perceive overweight as normal.

Also, there must be regional variations if the OP really sees hardly any obese people. I'm obese - bmi around 34 - but where I live, that's pretty normal. I see plenty of people larger than me out and about.

My dad has type 2 diabetes and it's really debilitating for him. Physically he has no energy, always exhausted, his weight puts pressure on his joints. He diesn't sleep well.

It's made me very conscious that I do not want up become obese. I'm ' a fine figure of a woman' according to DP but can easily slip into fat without noticing fir ages.

I'd just like to point out that alzheimers disease is now being linked to diabetes type 2 (in fact some researchers believe it is the same disease).No wonder the government is concerned, they really can't afford to ignore it.

And unless you're a pretty dedicated weight lifter or rugby player then the BMI range of 18-25 takes into account the vast majority of body types. Also it would be very rare for anyone to have a BMI over 30 without an increase in body fat so at worst some very muscular sports people would be classified as "overweight" but probably not obese.

Oh that drives me loopy. The 'I go to the gym a couple of times a week - so the bmi chart doesn't apply to me because muscle is heavier than fat' people.
You need to be pretty dedicated to push the bmi chart because of muscle... More likely you're still fat.

grumblepuss I've heard that zumba and running have that effect as well .

Vanity sizing has a lot to answer for - I have a Laura Ashley dress from 30 years ago - it is a 14, it fits me perfectly - except now, according to Laura Ashley I am size 10 verging on size 8.
So when I was a teenager I was among the weightiest of my peers, now I'm one of the thinnest.

The other day, in John Lewis, a young girl, about 12 I'd say, walked past DD and me and DD looked at her and said aghast: "mummy, she wider than you are!" So when 12 years olds are wider than 50 year olds then there is an issue with people's weight I think.

I have also noticed that women in their 20's now look like my friend's mums I remember growing up in the 70's, who had put on weight after having 2 or 3 kids. What used to be referred to as a "matronly" figure.

Obesity is overweight.
Morbid obesity means it can threaten your health and lead to death (morbidity). Being overweight is a massive contributor to diabetes and heart disease. So yes, you should be worried, my brother is currently in hospital following a massive heart disturbance that has left him unable to lift his arms above his head in case he dies. He has a 44 inch waist and eats appalling crap. Cause and effect.

I agree with PP that people have lost sight of what is normal. I am 5'6" and 9 st, right in the middle of the healthy BMI range. I'm always being told by those fatter than me that I'm too skinny, men like "real women", you need feeding up. I eat huge portions of healthy food and quite a lot of snacks, I don't cut out anything, I just make sure I use more than I eat. People seem to think this is some sort of alchemy, and that I must be lying about how much I eat. It's madness!

helloitsme yes, I look at some young women and think something has gone very wrong for me (40, 2 kids) to have a skinnier waist than them.

""Obesity is overweight.""

Well, no it isn't, being overweight doesn't mean that there is any risk to your health. Being an ideal weight doesn't equal healthy, either.

""Being overweight is a massive contributor to diabetes and heart disease. ""

Not by itself. All of the latest research points towards activity levels and the quality of a persons diet, rather than body size.

There has just been the largest body of research done on fat around organs etc and people that were overweight, but active scored better than those that were thin, but didn't do enough exercise and ate badly.

I agree that everyone has been sucked in by the food industry, as a Vegan I'm amazed at the crap people consume, without question.

As someone in my 40's, who hasnt had large amounts of disposable income, I'm amazed at what people now seem to think is a good diet for their children.

As for the body measurements and weight, I prefer the old "pinch more than an inch" and it's not ideal.

I'm from a mixed heritage background, we have large hips and arses, we also seem to be heavier boned.

I would be at starvation point, or dead to be as light or small as some of the sizes quoted.

I was medically underweight, yet hip size wise, didn't drop below a size 10. Likewise my DD's are between 9-11 stone, yet don't carry any body fat.

I think we go need up start with the food industry and be questioning why are grown food is dropping in nutritional value.

There are quite a few seriously obese children at my dd's school, particularly yrs 5&6. I'd also say that out of 60 work colleauges at my place of work, approx a third are obese, a couple of them seriously so. There are also a lot of obese mums at the school gates, I think it is a real and escalating problem.

Obesity IS a health risk all by itself. A smaller risk than simply being unfit, but it's an independent effect. (Do I really have to go find all the systematic reviews and massive cohort studies to back that up?) I think there could be more success if health promotion programmes changed emphasis from fat to fitness, though, I'll give you that. Being thin and quite unfit is more risk to your health than being a bit fat but still fit.

I think the problem is that it is far more complex an issue than people want to believe. The issues stem from more than just "laziness". It's all a complex web, the easy availability of cheap, addictive processed foods, the hours people are now expected to work, the prevalence of technology and the social normalising of being overweight, the vast sums to be made in the dieting business. For every person who is obese there is a complex contributory background that is not easily treated. Many, many people spend their whole lives trapped in a cycle of making a colossal effort lose weight only to put it back on slowly over the following years. Lifestyle norms nowadays are a big part of the problem. Things like treating yourself to the odd takeaway, a couple of glasses of wine or biscuits/doughnuts/chocolate at your desk, working very long hours and living too far from work to reasonably commute or walk can easily add up over a decade to a person being overweight or obese. Sadly, I see no political will to change these things, no real efforts to force food manufacturers to improve their products, to encourage building of affordable housing close to where people work, to reduce working hours (some of the longest in Europe) there is only a desire to apportion blame to the individual there by boosting the diet industry further. An industry that has vested interest in ensuring weight loss is not permanent but rapid and unsustainable long term. How many people do you know who say they are going back onto doing insert diet/slimming club of choice because it worked for them before???

People worked stupidly longer hours in the past. That's what agrarian societies were like. And they only had enough food in the house each day to last for that day. Much of the world still lives like that. Or they have dried foodstores that are the last harvest that they have to make last for X many months until next harvest, so no over-eating allowed.

Sorry, should have said working very long hours in sedentary jobs. Few people in agrarian societies kept a roof over their heads and food on the table by spend 8+ hours sat at a computer or in a meeting.

No one walks anymore.
Even SAHM mother with children.
They drop them off at school and then they drive to the gym. Child then gets driven home in the afternoon.

There are some areas in London where every second shop is a fried chicken one.